Toxic Algae

[Old plug]

Still fisher that just shows how regional the rain has been. My son lives in O Fallon near 40 they. have gotten there share. My daughter lives in Hermann and they. have gotten soaked most of the summer.

[Jerry Rapp]

we need rain badly in Southeast Missouri. The weather has been great, but the Black River gage is at 2.7 feet which is very low. In the last 30 days things have went downhill very quick. Maybe some good rain by weeks end, I hope so.

[Al Agnew]

The Meramec murkiness is probably caused by one of two things...I haven't seen it in a long time since I've been out here in Montana, so I don't know what the water looks like, but brownish murkiness on the Meramec is usually caused by a mild flood sometime earlier in the year that dumped a lot of sediment into the river, but the river went back down quickly and the sediment wasn't carried all the way down the river but settled out in all the slower water areas. I've seen the Meramec and Big River when every step you took while wading stirred up large amounts of silt. Then you add in lots of jetboat traffic, which keeps stirring up that silt but not carrying it downstream very far, and the river never gets a chance to clear.

If the water is more greenish but still very murky, it may be coming from Maramec Spring. The water of Maramec Spring comes from the Dry Fork watershed, which is a huge watershed with a lot of cattle farming, and the water often doesn't get filtered out much before entering the spring system, and comes in very murky. It may even get a lot more murky after entering the river, as it mixes with the warmer water and the suspended algae growth explodes. The Meramec is nearly always murkier above the mouth of the Huzzah than it is below it, and it's due mainly to the influence of the spring. Of course, it isn't the only source of overfertilization...there's plenty of cattle farming all over the Meramec watershed.